


Cheers, Darlin'

by mouselini



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, F/M, i write about booze a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 06:40:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3317780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouselini/pseuds/mouselini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlet/character study in which Blackwall drinks wine and watches Lavellan walk away with Cullen. It's implied that Lavellan left him after his personal mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheers, Darlin'

**Author's Note:**

> This is a distraction from the actual fic I'm writing. I also started a new game as a Dalish mage (I'm usually dual weapon rogue) and the Cullen dialogue options are so much cooler, wow.

Drinking comes easy. Swordplay, horses, carpentry, all the things a boy would learn at the dawn of his first firm handshake slings proudly around his neck like glittering medallions and he's never tried to hide it.

When Blackwall snakes his fingers around the body of a fresh bottle of wine his knuckles crack, and in the courtyard below he catches the starlit silhouette of his tired Dalish girl hiding her arms from the chill of the breeze. He freezes, suddenly breathless, watches her as she flicks her short hair away from her eyes before he slowly allows himself to lean back against the shadowed corner of the barn. He tastes his lips as they redden with alcohol and wants to run to her, tell her to come in from the cold, ask her if she's waiting for him because she's waiting for something but then he appears and throws his arms around her like he's owned her all her life.

And Blackwall thinks it looks too natural to be honest.

He empties the bottle and immediately reaches for another, spends no time chewing off its cork, forgets to swallow twice. They're walking now. They're whispering. He takes a swig, thinks they don't fit, thinks Cullen's too tall for her, too yellow, too broken. A caustic chuckle funnels through the haystacks and he leaps, excited, but the silence that follows offers him nothing but a fleeting reflection of himself in the curving glass while resentment fastens its fangs at his throat. The laughter, like the wine and the handshake and the truth, has always been his own, and tonight the winter is colder than ever.

Yes, Corin, he's broken. That's what you like, right?

The thought churns like bile in his throat and when he spits it hits the wooden planks with the angry sound of lightning. His fists tighten. They begin to shake when he sees her shoulders turn, when armored fingers graze in slow rivulets down her forearms, her back, and Blackwall doesn't hear the growl that wrenches through his grinding teeth when they dip lower.

_Yes, that's what you like._

Watching him touch her like that makes Blackwall's hands sting and for a moment he thinks he can feel the silk of her tunic beneath his fists. He spits again, scratches absently at the wine label with the same fingers he used to work her open, to spread her until she cried because she was too tight to fit him the first time. His thumb slides across the mouth of his bottle and he can almost feel the warmth of her opening at his fingertips, just like he hears the beautiful Spring sound of her breath shuddering against his neck every time he closes his eyes.

Laughter rings again--watery, strangled--and the memory trickles down to his hardening groin while salt stains his eyes until he no longer sees any space between his girl and her new puzzle. Blackwall blinks, bets himself that Cullen wouldn't know what to say to her if he fucks her, bares his teeth with a click against the mouth of the bottle at the image of her spreading herself under the weight of anybody else. 

He chokes when he hears her name in the wind because it sounds too sharp on another man's tongue. "Corin," he hisses to himself, "Corin, Coh-ren, Coh-ren, it's Coh- _ren_ , you fucking--" the statement drowns in a swallow and he's left holding his hands up to the quivering curl of his mouth when he sees her stand on the tips of her feet to kiss him. 

Blackwall lets his head drop back against the wooden chair while Cullen's hands splay across the back of her coat in a night framed by the drunken edges of his eyelids. He watches as shadows glide over the Commander's shoulders as he sweeps her into his cloak, and when he looks up, when Cullen throws a knowing glance over his shoulder and locks a gaze to his with the slow smolder of a growing flame, Blackwall swears he sees a glimmer of a smirk play at his scarred lip as he steers the elf away from the barn.

Seconds pass and Blackwall does not blink. He lifts the wine to his mouth and watches Cullen's yellow eyes as they drop first. In a drunken daze he calls it a surrender, a defeat, believes he has won even though the world drains from him with every sip he takes and his sun, tiny and Dalish and young, is softly disappearing right before his eyes, chasing after something to fix, another veil to lift, a well-timed glimpse of Summer through the black cracks of a collapsing wall. She could change the seasons with her smile and with an honest plea turn night into day, and her hips are now guarded by the gloves of a Templar who could take it all away from her without a second thought. The thought sends Blackwall gagging and retching to the floor. Who the fuck is she, drinking it all in like a child--could she not see the danger she puts herself in? Does she really think she could build bridges over every deteriorating wall she finds?

When Blackwall left, he did it for her and all the stars in her eyes when she looked at him the way she did. He expected to hang and she stopped it. He expected to be executed and she conscripted him to the Wardens. He had thanked her, apologized, plead, told her he loved her more than his life, offered to take it with his own sword to prove it to her if she'd just let him touch her one last time. He kissed every star as it fell from her sky and ran after her, darting between retiring soldiers and crowds of Orlesian nobles to catch up to her retreating frame, crashing to his knees in the middle of the night, sobbing, whispering "I'm still me, I'm still me" but he couldn't stop her from setting fire to the floorboards beneath his feet or freezing the door shut behind her back.

He crawls around his mess and reaches toward the remaining wine abandoned by the window. The bottle feels warm in his shaking grasp and with a strangled sound he lifts it in slow salute to the little girl whose back he can no longer see, and Cullen, yellow Cullen, broken Cullen, Cullen the Templar who will offer to warm her when she can warm herself, who will feed her stories until she hates her magic more than she's ever hated anything ( _except me_ , he thinks, but it's painless and dry now and for that he is thankful) -- Cullen who will stop the seasons from ever changing again.


End file.
